Old Prophet from the Monetary Crisis
[See also my post Harry Browne and the History of the Thirteenth Chapter]
Harry Browne, for one, on his appearance - paired with Eliot Janeway -
Don't tell me, Dr., that you've forgotten all about the [cue closing credits]... EliotWay Theory?
Harry Browne - The Coming Devaluation
Firing Line with William F. Buckley Jr. "How Does It Look for the Dollar?"
On August 15, 1971, the Nixon Administration devalued the US dollar. Who knew?
Musings On Money; Buy land! buy gold! buy silver! buy Swiss francs!
By PAUL E. ERDMAN
Reviewing books by Eliot Janeway and Harry Browne at the same time is like commenting on performances by a concert violinist and a rock guitar player in the same space. In this case, the common denominator is not music, but money how to make it and how to keep it. But that is about all the two authors, and their books, have in common.November 21, 1976
on an episode of Firing Line taped on September 3, 1970 in the wake of his first book, the surprise bestseller How You Can Profit From the Coming Devaluation.*
*Arlington House, where the young Lew Rockwell was his editor; no fools in seeing the gold in them thar head-for-the-hillsTake the money and run was Woody Allen's advice. And that's Mr. Browne's too. Specifically, put your savings in a Swiss bank, buy silver bullion and coin and gold stocks, and find a place in the country where you can ride out the "chaos and rioting" in the cities that would accompany runaway inflation. - The New York Times, January 3, 1971
literary hotcakes, Macmillan, Avon, Bantam and Morrow** soon rushed in where till then only right-wing angels had trod.
**And, twenty-six years later, he found St. Martin's in his field of green as well, to whose issue of Harry's 1996 campaign book our newspaper of skipping record would seem to have assigned the same sub-editor who, in hoping apparently to alert the nation's book buyers to the danger of the .45 revolutions per minute Browne's dissident dollar doctrines brandished, annotated his appearances in 1974 on its bestseller lists with the descriptor "Buy gold, Swiss francs and a gun", even though, as he later noted, he had never mentioned guns in any of his investment books:
More insider baseball on Harry Browne, Eliot Janeway, Ludwig von Mises, the Brothers and Father Rukeyser, &c.:BOOKS IN BRIEF: FICTION
By DAVID DIAMOND
Published: August 04, 1996Why Government Doesn't WorkBy Harry Browne.St. Martin's, $19.95.Harry Browne, the putative Libertarian Party candidate for President, has a game plan for shrinking the Federal budget. Mr. Browne sees the Government as ''an agency of coercion'' that differs from the Mafia only in that it ''has flags in front of its offices.'' He blames the Government for everything from crime to declining moral standards to escalating health-care costs to a welfare system in which ''you can get a regular check from the Federal Government if you're willing to undertake the arduous task of walking to the mailbox once a month.'' His answer is to let the marketplace take over, leaving education, Social Security, even national defense to private interests. If elected, he says, he'll pardon everyone convicted solely on any Federal gun-control charge and try to sell the national parks. David Diamond
On Tue, Mar 19, 2013 at 5:19 PM, a Ph.D. economist asked:
Is there a Jane Eliotway?
Don't tell me, Dr., that you've forgotten all about the [cue closing credits]... EliotWay Theory? As Jane's husband George said, upon finding his eyes strained beyond endurance by a computer simulation of the EliotWay in perpetual oscillation, "JANE - CRASH THIS CRAZY MARKET!
*That, of course, would be George EliotWay, author of The Treadmill on the Floss.**
**Not to be confused with An Electric Toothbrush Stress Test of One's Own by Virginia Wolfe, whose earlier books included The Elliott Waves and the English western (with, e.g., Dick Turpin and Dennis Moore in place of cowboys) They Went Dalloway.***
***Not to be confused with Virginia Wholf, author of To the Lifehouse.
On Tue, Mar 19, 2013 at 10:50 PM, a Ph.D. economist wrote:
[responding to YouTubes, above, of Harry Browne on Firing Line]
Indeed, here in microcosm, the entire mainstream vs "other ideas" debate.
Score 1 for Ludwig van's side but even then did Wall St Week (etc) outdraw Firing Line?
I would think so:
Show popularity
The premiere of WSW on November 20, 1970 was carried on eleven stations of the Eastern Educational Television Network. The show rapidly grew in coverage and viewers until it became one of the most popular programs on the newly created PBS member stations.[citation needed] At its peak, the program aired on over 300 stations, and claimed a viewership of 4,100,000 households, which meant more people watched WSW every week than read the Wall Street Journal.[citation needed] The program became a major source of profit for both MPT and PBS through underwriting support and viewer pledges (it is estimated PBS earned $5,000,000 profit annually from the show).[citation needed]...Rukeyser's dismissal
From its ratings peak in the early 1980s, WSW suffered a long steady decline in viewers due to competition from shows such as the Nightly Business Report, cable programs like Moneyline, and cable networks such as CNBC.[citation needed] By 2001 viewership was down to 1,500,000 households and demographics showed that the average WSW viewer was 65 years old (about the same age as Rukeyser). MPT began to discuss the possibility of updating the format in an effort to reverse these trends. On March 21, 2002, MPT announced that beginning in June the program would be renamed Wall Street Week with Fortune, would be a collaboration between MPT and Fortune magazine, and would feature two new cohosts. Rukeyser was invited to remain with the program in a reduced role as a senior correspondent, but he turned down the offer.The following evening, Rukeyser opened the telecast by announcing "A funny thing happened to me on the way to the studio this week—I got ambushed." He criticized MPT's decision to change the show format, announced that he was developing a new business program for PBS, and concluded his commentary by asking viewers to write to their local PBS station and request it carry his new show. After the broadcast MPT dismissed Rukeyser and executive producer Rich Dubroff. Over the next three months Marshall Loeb and Ray Brady served as guest hosts while the new format was put in place.Despite "ambushing" Rukeyser, the show's trend of losing viewers continued as the show floundered on without Rukeyser's trusted presence and was terminated in early 2005. Rukeyser died 11 months after the show ended.
I had a VHS segment from an old Wall Street Week anniversary special, featuring a brief clip from 1974 of an event unique in the show's history:
Harry's plane was late, so Louis Rukeyser and the other "buzzards", as Rukeyser called them, decided to discuss Harry's second and biggest bestseller, You Can Profit From a Monetary Crisis, and hope he would show up part-way through - which he did.
"Next time, take the train" joked one of the panelists as Harry sat down on the couch in the show's studio in Owings Mills, Maryland.
In 1951, Ludwig von Mises once filled in for Louis's and his brother/fellow financial journalist William's likewise father Merryle Rukeyser (1897-1988), whose acid old-curmudgeon tongue directed at bad economic policy viewers of his occasional appearances on his son's show will recall:
"Inflation [misprinted "Injection" in some editions] Must End in a Slump." New York Journal American. (August 28, 1951). Written as guest columnist for Merryle Rukeyser. Included in Economic Freedom and Interventionism.
More on Louis's -
The show ran for 32 years, reaching its ratings peak in the mid-1980s. But by the 1990s, it faced increasing competition from rivals such as CNBC[6] before Rukeyser left in 2002 after a dispute with network executives who wanted to replace him with younger hosts (he was 69 at the time) with the idea that this would spark ratings[1] MPT executives offered him a five minute segment on the new, retooled show; Rukeyser declined. In his final episode, which was broadcast live, he deplored the decision of Maryland Public Television's management and urged viewers to write their PBS stations and clamor for the new financial program he would soon create. Maryland Public Television fired him immediately after the broadcast and erased the master tape[citation needed]; the only existing copies of the broadcast possibly exist at other PBS stations, in home copies or on YouTube.After Rukeyser's departure, the series was renamed Wall $treet Week with FORTUNE and co-hosted by the editorial director of Fortune (magazine) magazine, Geoffrey Colvin, along with Karen Gibbs, a former senior business correspondent on the Fox News Channel. But without Rukeyser, the show's ratings collapsed and Maryland Public Television finally pulled the plug in June 2005.Shortly after leaving Wall $treet Week, Rukeyser began a new program, Louis Rukeyser's Wall Street (named after one of his newsletters) on the cable channel CNBC. Highly unusual for a cable network, advertising on the show was limited to before-and-after "underwriting" announcements similar to those on non-commercial broadcast stations. This was done at Rukeyser's insistence, so that WLIW, the secondary PBS station in the New York area, could offer the program to its viewers on the weekend.[8]Rukeyser was diagnosed with multiple myeloma (a type of bone cancer) around this time and began missing appearances on the show, which was finally cancelled at his own request[1] after health problems kept him away more than a year.
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